I hope you all enjoyed the wintery weather as much as I enjoyed seeing it come your way. For the last two weeks, Minnesota too was in a deep freeze and my only consolation was seeing that well, at least Wabash is getting it, too. During the weeklong winter break, I wonder if some of you took time to reflect. We are, after all, in the New Year: 2014. What is 2014 going to be like? What goals? What hopes? What fears? What friendships will you reflect upon? What commitments will you chose to make?
While Amy and I were home, we had a chance to reconnect with an old friend, a woman from my church who in many ways was like a big sister to me. We sat down for coffee with her and her significant other, a man named Bob whom she recently began dating. What we learned about Bob was nothing short of astonishing. Bob is a recovering addict, though you would never suspect it given his very successful and well maintained appearance. At one point in the conversation the question was asked of him, “How were you able to pull yourself out of your addiction?” And like many 12 steppers, he acknowledged his captivity to drugs and alcohol, his inability to do it on his own, even the higher power. “But I grew up in Episcopal School, I knew the liturgy, I knew the tradition, I had been surrounded by it all my life. I knew about the Bible, what I didn’t know was the author. I didn’t know the story. I was unable to live fully because I didn’t know my own story. And what I discovered in the Bible was that God, by speaking to these various authors who wrote this Bible, was telling my story.”
It’s all of our stories really, not just those of us who battle addiction. All of us fall captive to sin, our lives get seriously messed up, we find that we need something – or more importantly someone – to rescue us, and then in our moment of deepest need, someone comes to rescue us. The Bible is precisely this story.
Download the entire transcript here: 2 Timothy 3 What is the Bible
